[AMF]

" Wendys'...had missed a deadline for joining a federal program that would have helped them attain legal status."

These are people who have been in the country for, at least in one case, 14 years

see the last line in the article: "...said Olivares, who has been in the country 14 years"

They've been slinging hash, and cooking french fries, and broiling hamburgers for $5.25 an hour so Americans can have their dollar cheesburgers and their quarter pounders with cheese. They've been doing this illegally, risking deportation to their home countries and separation from their families, or they've been sending every spare cent they have back to their families in their home country. They live in fear of the law, and at the mercy of clearly unscrupulous corporations who care only about the profit margin (after all, that's capitalism, folks)...these people do jobs, we are told, that no typical American citizen would stoop to doing...our (American) standard of living is based largely upon the efforts of these people, tens of millions of them, who live every day serving our fat @sses hamburgers and could be deported at any moment. And they've more than likely gone through hell to get here for the privilege of doing so.

They "deserve" to be "American" as much as anyone for all that they have gone through and put up with.

Heck, they deserve it more than most of "us" in fact.

What kind of people do we want to carry on the "American Dream"? We want someone who is going to swim across the Rio Grande in the dead of night, leaving behind their family in order to work hard, work long, and work for a pittance so that they canhelp themselves and their loved one's get a chance to get ahead.

Everyone who started in "America" was given most of what they have. These people earn every damn cent of what they get.

I shouldn't drink and post. But it had to be said.

Edit add 1: I put things in quotes to emphasize the "american-centric" aspect of this post.

Edit add 2: see my sig as a postscript.